From the dust cover flap:

[...]

Garland traces the earliest settlements of Eastern Point; the arrival of the Boston merchants John Perkins Cushing and the contentious Thomas Niles; the building of the first lighthouse (1832) and Civil War fortifications; and the gradual appearance of the summer colonists.

From Back Bay to fishing dory, he brings to life a colorful gallery of diverse characters; matriarchs and patriarchs, old and newly rich; the "great and the near-great;" the brillliant coterie of writers, artists and dilettantes, who began flocking to Eastern Point in the gilded 'nineties. At one time or another the Point attracted to its shores such noatbles as Isabella Stuart Gardner, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling (whence his inspiration for Captains Courageous), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Clarence Birdseye, the artists Cecilia Beaux and Charles A. Platt, and scores of others. Two of his most influencial inhabitants were Henry Sleeper, builder of the Beauport museum, and the enigmatic A. Piatt Andrew, patron of art and artists, U. S. Congressman and founder of the American Field Service.

[...]